Archives des mots-clés : Scholarly Publishing

Motivations, understandings, and experiences of open‐access mega‐journal authors: Results of a large‐scale survey

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Authors : Simon Wakeling, Claire Creaser, Stephen Pinfield, Jenny Fry, Valérie Spezi, Peter Willett, Monica Paramita

Open‐access mega‐journals (OAMJs) are characterized by their large scale, wide scope, open‐access (OA) business model, and “soundness‐only” peer review. The last of these controversially discounts the novelty, significance, and relevance of submitted articles and assesses only their “soundness.”

This article reports the results of an international survey of authors (n = 11,883), comparing the responses of OAMJ authors with those of other OA and subscription journals, and drawing comparisons between different OAMJs. Strikingly, OAMJ authors showed a low understanding of soundness‐only peer review: two‐thirds believed OAMJs took into account novelty, significance, and relevance, although there were marked geographical variations.

Author satisfaction with OAMJs, however, was high, with more than 80% of OAMJ authors saying they would publish again in the same journal, although there were variations by title, and levels were slightly lower than subscription journals (over 90%).

Their reasons for choosing to publish in OAMJs included a wide variety of factors, not significantly different from reasons given by authors of other journals, with the most important including the quality of the journal and quality of peer review.

About half of OAMJ articles had been submitted elsewhere before submission to the OAMJ with some evidence of a “cascade” of articles between journals from the same publisher.

URL : Motivations, understandings, and experiences of open‐access mega‐journal authors: Results of a large‐scale survey

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24154

Does Academic Publishing Lead to Work-Related Stress or Happiness?

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Author : Jaroslava Kubátová

The topic of work-related stress and happiness has recently been of interest to science as well as in practice. Work-related stress has negative effects on workers, organizations, and the whole of society, whereas happiness has positive effects. It is therefore important to monitor the wellbeing of workers.

This article deals with stress and happiness as related to academic publishing. To answer the research question of whether academic publishing leads to stress or happiness, a narrative analysis was conducted.

Narratives from ten Czech academics were collected and analyzed with the use of a categorical-content approach. The categories used are the general causes of work-related stress and happiness as identified in the literature: work overload, ambiguity, conflict, the sense of meaningful work, job satisfaction, and affective organizational commitment.

It was found that academic publishing leads to both work-related stress and happiness. However, stress is more prevalent. Not only do academics experience all the general causes of work-related stress, unfortunately they often lack the sources of happiness. Many specific causes of stress and happiness, as well as unhappiness, were discovered in the narratives.

Several ways to improve the situation have been suggested. Refining policies in human resources is particularly important if universities wish to retain their academics.

URL : Does Academic Publishing Lead to Work-Related Stress or Happiness?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7040066

A Team Approach: Library Publishing Partnerships with Scholarly Societies

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Author : Suzanne Cady Stapleton

INTRODUCTION

The journal publishing service at the University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries is structured to use a team-based approach that integrates subject specialists across the library.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM

Since 2012, the UF Libraries have worked in partnership with a number of scholarly societies to publish their research. The focus, to date, of academic library publishing on institutional publications belies potential partnerships with scholarly societies and organizations external to the library’s institution.

Services provided, challenges faced, and examples of successful publishing partnerships with UF Libraries are described. The team approach enables the library to be innovative and nimble in response to publishing opportunities.

Scholarly societies most interested in entering publishing contracts with the Libraries publishing program are those that share aspects of the library mission such as accessibility and innovation.

NEXT STEPS

Academic library publishing offers unique partnership opportunities for scholarly societies and external organizations that are mutually beneficial and that complement library publishing of institutional material.

URL : A Team Approach: Library Publishing Partnerships with Scholarly Societies

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2326

Publishers’ Responsibilities in Promoting Data Quality and Reproducibility

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Author : Iain Hrynaszkiewicz

Scholarly publishers can help to increase data quality and reproducible research by promoting transparency and openness.

Increasing transparency can be achieved by publishers in six key areas: (1) understanding researchers’ problems and motivations, by conducting and responding to the findings of surveys; (2) raising awareness of issues and encouraging behavioural and cultural change, by introducing consistent journal policies on sharing research data, code and materials; (3) improving the quality and objectivity of the peer-review process by implementing reporting guidelines and checklists and using technology to identify misconduct; (4) improving scholarly communication infrastructure with journals that publish all scientifically sound research, promoting study registration, partnering with data repositories and providing services that improve data sharing and data curation; (5) increasing incentives for practising open research with data journals and software journals and implementing data citation and badges for transparency; and (6) making research communication more open and accessible, with open-access publishing options, permitting text and data mining and sharing publisher data and metadata and through industry and community collaboration.

This chapter describes practical approaches being taken by publishers, in these six areas, their progress and effectiveness and the implications for researchers publishing their work.

URL : Publishers’ Responsibilities in Promoting Data Quality and Reproducibility

Alternative location : https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F164_2019_290

The fundamental problem blocking open access and how to overcome it: the BitViews project

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Authors : Camillo Lamanna, Manfredi La Manna

In our view the fundamental obstacle to open access (OA) is the lack of any incentive-based mechanism that unbundles authors’ accepted manuscripts (AMs) from articles (VoRs).

The former can be seen as the public good that ought to be openly accessible, whereas the latter is owned by publishers and rightly paywall-restricted. We propose one such mechanism to overcome this obstacle: BitViews.

BitViews is a blockchain-based application that aims to revolutionize the OA publishing ecosystem. Currently, the main academic currency of value is the citation. There have been attempts in the past to create a second currency whose measure is the online usage of research materials (e.g. PIRUS).

However, these have failed due to two problems. Firstly, it has been impossible to find a single agency willing to co-ordinate and fund the validation and collation of global online usage data. Secondly, online usage metrics have lacked transparency in how they filter non-human online activity.

BitViews is a novel solution which uses blockchain technology to bypass both problems: online AMS usage will be recorded on a public, distributed ledger, obviating the need for a central responsible agency, and the rules governing activity-filtering will be part of the open-source BitViews blockchain application, creating complete transparency.

Once online AMS usage has measurable value, researchers will be incentivized to promote and disseminate AMs. This will fundamentally re-orient the academic publishing ecosystem.

A key feature of BitViews is that its success (or failure) is wholly and exclusively in the hands of the worldwide community of university and research libraries, as we suggest that it ought to be financed by conditional crowdfunding, whereby the actual financial commitment of each contributing library depends on the total amount raised.

If the financing target is not reached, then all contributions are returned in full and if the target is over-fulfilled, then the surplus is returned pro rata.

URL : The fundamental problem blocking open access and how to overcome it: the BitViews project

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.488

 

Mapping the Publishing Challenges for an Open Access University Press

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Authors : Megan Taylor

Managing a New University Press (NUP) is often a one-person operation and, with limits on time and resources, efficiency and effectiveness are key to having a successful production process and providing a high level of author, editor and reader services.

This article looks at the challenges faced by open access (OA) university presses throughout the publishing journey and considers ways in which these challenges can be addressed. In particular, the article focuses on six key stages throughout the lifecycle of an open access publication: commissioning; review; production; discoverability; marketing; analytics.

Approached from the point of view of the University of Huddersfield Press, this article also draws on discussions and experiences of other NUPs from community-led forums and events.

By highlighting the issues faced, and the potential solutions to them, this research recognises the need for a tailored and formalised production workflow within NUPs and also provides guidance how to begin implementing possible solutions.

URL : Mapping the Publishing Challenges for an Open Access University Press

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7040063

Defining predatory journals and responding to the threat they pose: a modified Delphi consensus process

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Authors : Samantha Cukier, Manoj M. Lalu, Gregory L. Bryson, Kelly D. Cobey, Agnes Grudniewicz, David Moher

Background

Posing as legitimate open access outlets, predatory journals and publishers threaten the integrity of academic publishing by not following publication best practices. Currently, there is no agreed upon definition of predatory journals, making it difficult for funders and academic institutions to generate practical guidance or policy to ensure their members do not publish in these channels.

Methods

We conducted a modified three-round Delphi survey of an international group of academics, funders, policy makers, journal editors, publishers and others, to generate a consensus definition of predatory journals and suggested ways the research community should respond to the problem.

Results

A total of 45 participants completed the survey on predatory journals and publishers. We reached consensus on 18 items out of a total of 33, to be included in a consensus definition of predatory journals and publishers.

We came to consensus on educational outreach and policy initiatives on which to focus, including the development of a single checklist to detect predatory journals and publishers, and public funding to support research in this general area.

We identified technological solutions to address the problem: a ‘one-stop-shop’ website to consolidate information on the topic and a ‘predatory journal research observatory’ to identify ongoing research and analysis about predatory journals/publishers.

Conclusions

In bringing together an international group of diverse stakeholders, we were able to use a modified Delphi process to inform the development of a definition of predatory journals and publishers.

This definition will help institutions, funders and other stakeholders generate practical guidance on avoiding predatory journals and publishers.

URL : Defining predatory journals and responding to the threat they pose: a modified Delphi consensus process

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1101/19010850